The Hidden Man (5 page)

BACKSTAGE

THE PACIFIC MAJESTIC THEATRE—SAN FRANCISCO’S FINEST

E
VEN THOUGH THE SHOW
had not been over for long, Randall Blackburn was astounded by how badly things were already going in Duncan’s dressing room. The showman seemed all worked up, showing a remarkable amount of after-show nerves. He continually paced up and down the length of the narrow room.

Duncan had just swatted aside Blackburn’s early attempt to point out that a homicide detective was not likely to be the best choice for a personal bodyguard. He stopped him cold.

“Once again, I am sorry if the assignment is not to your liking. The fact is, I asked specifically for you, Detective.”

“Me.”

“Oh yes.”

“Why is that?”

Duncan exhaled in exasperation. “Because of your investigative skills, of course.”

“In homicide?”

“Yes, again. Homicide. You don’t think so? You think I would make it all up? You will eventually change your mind, but I would like to still be alive when you do. You see, I don’t just want you to protect me at public appearances like a simple body guard. Rather, I will rely upon your trained eye to intercept potential problems from the crowd, guests up onstage, et cetera.”

“Any trained officer can watch over a crowd for you.”

“But in between, your most important job, your real job…” he stopped pacing just long enough to complete the thought. “Your real job will be to investigate my murder.”

Blackburn felt his patience beginning to dissolve. He glanced over to Shane, who was keeping a quiet watch from the dressing room sofa.

“A future murder? Mr. Duncan, maybe I should explain that my job begins
after
a homicide. The law can be a funny thing. I hope to prevent other murders, but it takes that first one, at least, to get the ball rolling.”

“Yes indeed! Thus my strong preference that you should investigate my murder
before
it happens. Pick the potential assassin out of the crowd and follow him home and investigate him.”

“It’s a him?”

“What else?”

“You never know.”

“Find out what kind of intersection the event of my death and the intention of my killer have in common. Then come up with a way to deflect it. The crime. If you fail…” He decided to leave it at that.

“Mr. Duncan, I—”

“So! You understand? Keep it from happening.” He stopped pacing for another moment to call into the shadows, “May we please get some more water back here, someone?” He smiled apologetically to Blackburn.

“Mr. Duncan, is somebody after you?”

“Oh yes. Jealousy, you know, it can drive a murderous heart.”

“Do you have a rival?”

“In my field? I have nothing
but
rivals. It takes that kind of envy to put murder into play.”

“Or fear of the unknown,” came Shane’s voice from over on the sofa.

Duncan looked over at him with obvious annoyance. “Are you still here, Mister…?”

“Nightingale.”

“Yes. I believe I told you that your presence is not necessary.”

“He’s with me, Mr. Duncan.”

“I only sent for you, Detective.”

“You are the lucky winner of a package deal, sir. That’s just the way it is.”

Duncan rubbed his face furiously for a moment, then abruptly stopped, inhaled, and demanded, “What can this young fellow do that is so impor—”

“Fear of the unknown makes more sense,” Shane piped up again, “for a motive.” He smiled and shrugged. “A rival who wants to personally eliminate you has to be willing to risk losing all chance of ever having any success, for himself, if he is caught. He has to be willing to give up his hope. It takes something very powerful to drive someone to that point. What better than the fear of an unknown future, one that is unknown because of the damage that this man thinks you have done to him?”

“As you say. And that’s why one of my rivals is going to try to kill me.”

“Except that fear of the unknown can strike anybody,” Shane replied, “from any walk of life. That means that a potential assassin has an advantage on you, right off. Think of it: To some of the people in your audience, your work looks like black magic or something like that.”

“I don’t discourage my audience from speculating as to where I get my—”

“And once some of them start to get the idea in their heads that what you do is something of the occult world, then it’s only a matter of time before one of them decides that it is the Devil’s work and that he doesn’t mind dying, just to get rid of you.”

Duncan looked over to Blackburn, puzzled. Blackburn could not keep the wide grin off his face. “You can see how he comes in handy,” he said.

“Oh that is magnificent, gentlemen! You have now opened up the field of potential suspects to include practically—”

“Everybody,” Shane topped him. “Anyone who’s ever seen your show or come into contact with your work.”

“Ah-hah. Thank you so much, Mister…I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten—”

“Nightingale,” Shane reminded him again. He was still standing among the checkered shadows with his hands in his pockets, making no move to come forward to Duncan. “Shane Nightingale, Mr. Duncan.”

“And,” Blackburn interrupted, turning to Duncan with an expression that dared him to disagree, “what Mr. Nightingale has just done for you is to allow you a realistic assessment of your source of potential attackers. It’s grim news, but without it, there’s not a thing that I can do, or that anybody else can do for that matter, that will keep you safe. You have to begin by knowing what to guard against. In this case, your very line of work puts you out in full view of anybody with the price of admission.”

Shane added, “The theatre is where John Wilkes Booth got President Lincoln.”

“I know that! Why do you think I called you? That’s why you have to stop it now!” Duncan shouted, suddenly wild-eyed.

Blackburn and Shane silently regarded him, waiting to see if there was more to come. Instead, Duncan clapped one hand over his mouth and took several deep breaths while he furiously polished his face with the other. Eventually, he removed both hands and continued.

“I apologize. Of course. It’s the strain.”

“What strain would that be, sir?”

“Somebody keeps taking things!” Duncan shouted. “Right from the bottom of my…”

Duncan blanched and fled from the room, with Blackburn and Shane close behind. But he only ran to the backstage commode, where he seized a small wooden box from the floor, and gasped with relief.

“Here it is! It’s still here!” Duncan hugged the box to his chest.

Blackburn turned to Shane, who merely rolled his eyes and looked away.

“Someone took that chest from you, Mr. Duncan?”

“This? Oh no, it just…Somebody got into the…Nothing! I’m tired, that’s all. Very tired, gentlemen. Detective. Mister, ah…”

“Sir, you’re not giving me anything at all to go on. I’m still not sure what you actually expect me to—”

“Yes! I know! Confusing! But sleep. Some rest. We’ll all feel so much better, yes? Give me a day. Two days. Give me two days, and we’ll meet here. Right at noon. Eh?”

“Mr. Duncan, let me just come out and say it. I don’t see any call for you to have a homicide detective to follow you around, when what you really need is a couple of young patrolmen. Young guys dying for a perpetrator to come along.”

“I know what I need, Detective! Right now, give me two days. We’ll meet here at the theatre.”

“Crack of noon,” Shane added.

“Yes!” Duncan nearly bellowed in relief. “I just need to go now, that’s all. In two days, we will, uh…”

“Form a plan,” Shane said.

“Exactly!”

“Figure out how to find a killer who hasn’t done anything yet,” Shane added, “before he does whatever it is that he’s possibly planning to do.”

“I am not joking.”

“Neither am I. Right now, at least, they don’t know that we are watching you. So we start there, at their point of ignorance. We may suffer from a lack of details about your potential assassin, but for the moment, the fact is that this person doesn’t know that you are taking protective measures. That can move the advantage back toward you.”

Duncan stared at him for a moment, then turned to Blackburn. “All right. You can bring him along with you.”

Then he clutched his wooden box tighter and walked out of the theatre, leaving through the rear fire escape. A moment later, he stepped back in through the door, quickly examined the door frame, the door itself, swung the door back and forth a couple of times, then shook his head and disappeared again.

He did it without once looking over in their direction. It was as if he had forgotten about them already.

In a late-night tavern not far from the theatre, the nondescript man swallowed steady rounds of inexpensive bar gin until his pocket cash started growing thin. Then he staggered away from the tavern in a display of willpower before he spent it all. He spent the rest of the night in a nearby church’s open chapel without knowing what kind of church it was. Theology made no difference to him. He only wanted to be alone with God.

He was proud that his personal character contained more than just the mere ability to walk away from the temptations of Demon Rum. He was also able to maintain the rigid control of a true supplicant while in this holy place. Example: Despite the alcohol and the silence of the chapel, he did not allow himself to fall asleep there. He remained awake and alert throughout his long prayer vigil.

There was much to contemplate. And with his long-familiar rage satisfied at last on this beautiful night, he now found himself able to feel remorse for certain things that he had to do, to make it happen. He had to admit that he had acted in a sneaky and vengeful way—perhaps even a lethal way. He could feel how unfortunate it was, that he had been provoked into such behavior.

So the nondescript man remained on his knees for hours, allowing the growing pain and stiffness to punish him. And still, the bodily pain was assuaged by his sense of great relief from the prison of his poisonous rage and the torment of unrelenting hateful thoughts. He had freed himself from them by taking action. It was so fine to feel cleansed and at peace with himself at long last. Gratitude filled him.

Overflowing with spiritual generosity, he prayed for everyone he knew, as well as for the entire, struggling world, that mercy might be shown to them even as it had just been shown to him—yes, one as humble as he, who had been Divinely guided through the process of bringing down an unforgiven bit of filth like James “J.D.” Duncan. It mattered not that he did not know precisely what form the disaster would take. He trusted that it was a thing of poetry because God was on his side.

And because of that, he had rock-solid faith that by now Duncan was either dead of poisoning from his massive dose of “secret” elixir, or he had made a fatal fool of himself onstage and ruined his credibility in front of the city authorities. Either outcome would be fine.

The glow of peace filled him.

Shane drove Blackburn home in their newly purchased Ford Model T. The car was already three years old, but perfectly reliable. It even still looked good. The years since the Great Earthquake had seen a large increase in the number of automobiles on the city’s roads, but there were still plenty of horse-drawn wagons and carriages in everyday use. So Shane made an absentminded game out of weaving to avoid the horse flop. With the car’s springy suspension, the ride remained smooth enough that each man still rode along lost in his thoughts. They were halfway home before Shane broke out with a small laugh.

Blackburn glanced over at him. “What.”

“Nothing. Thinking about Mr. Duncan, I guess. Did you see the part where he fooled the whole crowd into thinking that they were hearing all of these ex…ex…” He exhaled through his lips in this brief visit from his old stutter, then repeated, “exotic secrets?”

“I missed it.”

“I wish you had seen it. Everybody went in for it! All of them!”

“You didn’t.”

There was a brief pause, then Shane grinned.

Blackburn went on. “So why didn’t he have the same effect on you?

“Don’t know. I was watching him close up, because I wanted to learn something about how a man like that can be so at ease. You know, in front of a crowd like that. To always know what to say, what to do. Amazing.”

“You’re telling me that that’s why he couldn’t fool you? Because you were watching him closely? Come on, everybody watches a guy like him as close as they can.”

“Yeah. It’s just…”

Blackburn smiled. “It’s
just
a perfect example of why I want you tailing me on some of these cases.”

Shane smiled. He considered it for a moment and finally said, “I thought you were just getting me away from my daily restaurant work to relieve the boredom of waiting on tables. Act of mercy or whatnot.”

“That, too,” Blackburn solemnly agreed. “Act of mercy. Any guy who has enough money to go to college but chooses to wait on tables instead needs all the mercy he can get.”

Shane grinned, unfazed. Blackburn decided that this opportunity was about as good as he would find. “Listen, Shane, before we get back home, I need to talk to you about your experience with, you know, with police training.”